#Nuke deal won’t bring stability and other commentary

Foreign desk: Nuke Deal Won’t Bring Stability

Joe Biden claims the best way to achieve Mideast “stability” is by rejoining the nuclear deal with Iran — yet stable, counters Matthew Continetti at The Washington Free Beacon, “is not how most people would describe” the region after the agreement was inked in 2015. Instead, Tehran “continued to launch missiles and send weapons” to terror groups. It held American citizens hostage, detained US naval personnel and harbored al Qaeda’s No. 2. “The economic benefits from sanctions relief” allowed Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani to sow murder and chaos, until he was killed. No, “stability” won’t come just because Washington rejoins the deal — but “when the Iranian people put an end to the Islamic Revolution.”

Libertarian: Captives Fleeing Public Schools

The Chicago Teachers Union’s tacit threat to strike if students return to classes is just one of “a multitude of such battles across the country,” notes J.D. Tuccille at Reason, so “it’s no wonder that families weary of being held hostage to other people’s decisions are abandoning government schools to enroll their kids in private institutions or to teach them at home” — a shift that’s “likely to permanently transform education.” With public-school enrollment dropping in at least 20 states, “homeschooling, in particular, is booming,” tripling this year to 9 percent or more, which also means it’s becoming more socially acceptable. And even with the economy slammed, more people are opting for private schools. The flight also has more students escaping “politicized lessons” so typical of today’s public schools. The new education world “is bound to be more diverse in terms of its ideas and approaches, even as it’s better suited to the needs of parents and children.”

Conservative: Don’s Productive Presidency

“It is hard to imagine that President Trump will soon leave office,” rues Liz Peek at FoxNews.com. His tenure in the White House was “full of ­energy and purpose.” On “one issue after another,” the president used “common sense and sheer orneriness to buck the system. Not being a creature of the ‘swamp,’ Trump entered the Oval Office four years ago prepared to challenge everything” — from the open-borders utopianism of the bipartisan elite to various Mideast dogmas to climate obsessions that cost US workers and consumers dearly. Yes, “those years have also been, at times, chaotic and disruptive.” But for his working-class supporters, “fed up with political correctness and the censorious left, the Trump presidency has been a breath of fresh air” — even “great fun.”

Squad watch: House Progs Get Slapped

It wasn’t just New York’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who failed to get a seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, Alexander Sammon ­reports at The American Prospect: Texas Rep. Sylvia Garcia met the same fate. At the last minute, more moderate members beat them out — Reps. Kathleen Rice of New York and Lizzie Fletcher of Texas. This “resounding and surprising defeat for progressives” follows AOC’s support for primary challenges to the likes of Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who spoke out vehemently against both eventual losers. While other progs, such as New York’s Ritchie Torres and Adriano Espaillat, got prime committee spots, the pair of slights “looks like a shot across the bow that will have progressives on high alert” and could unite them “to ­oppose [Nancy] Pelosi’s speakership come Jan. 3.”

From the left: Pandemic Class War

“The pandemic is a convenient scapegoat for the largest upward wealth transfer in modern human history,” Alex Gutentag rages at The Bellows. Media, academic, government and corporate elites “weaponiz[ed] ­appeals to science” to repress all opposition to broad lockdowns. The ­result: “Millions of Americans have fallen into poverty or are on the verge of destitution. Stimulus money has largely been used as a handout to corporations, and more than 160,000 small businesses have closed” — even as the largest firms, particularly in tech, have achieved unrivaled dominance. “Unemployment, hunger, institutional breakdown and the destruction of social bonds are not symptoms of a virus. They are the indirect violence of class warfare.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board